Michael Artin

Michael Artin
Michael Artin (photo by George Bergman)
Born	(1934-06-28) 28 June 1934 Hamburg, Germany
Nationality	American Armenian
Fields	Mathematics
Institutions	MIT
Alma mater	Harvard University Princeton University
Thesis	On Enriques' Surfaces (1960)
Doctoral advisor	Oscar Zariski
Doctoral students	Eric Friedlander David Harbater Rick Miranda Zinovy Reichstein Amnon Yekutieli Jian James Zhang
Notable awards	Harvard Centennial Medal (2005) Steele Prize (2002) Wolf Prize (2013)

Michael Artin (born 28 June 1934) is an American mathematician of Armenian descent and a professor emeritus in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology mathematics department, known for his contributions to algebraic geometry^[1] and also generally recognized as one of the outstanding professors in his field.^[2]

Life and career

Artin was born in Hamburg, Germany, and brought up in Indiana.^{[citation needed]} His parents were Natalia Naumovna Jasny (Natascha) and Emil Artin, preeminent algebraist of the 20th century.^[3] Artin's parents had left Germany in 1937, because Michael Artin's maternal grandfather was Jewish.

Artin did his undergraduate studies at Princeton University, receiving an A.B. in 1955; he then moved to Harvard University, where he received a Ph.D. in 1960 under the supervision of Oscar Zariski.^[1][4]

In the early 1960s Artin spent time at the IHÉS in France, contributing to the SGA4 volumes of the Séminaire de géométrie algébrique, on topos theory and étale cohomology. His work on the problem of characterising the representable functors in the category of schemes has led to the Artin approximation theorem, in local algebra. This work also gave rise to the ideas of an algebraic space and algebraic stack, and has proved very influential in moduli theory. Additionally, he has made contributions to the deformation theory of algebraic varieties. He is currently working on noncommutative rings, especially geometric aspects.^{[citation needed]}

In 2002, Artin won the American Mathematical Society's annual Steele Prize for Lifetime Achievement. In 2005, he was awarded the Harvard Centennial Medal. In 2013 he won the Wolf Prize in Mathematics. He is also a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1969),^[5] the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics,^[1] and the American Mathematical Society.^[6]

See also

• Artin stacks
• Artin–Mazur zeta function
• Artin–Verdier duality

References

External links

• O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Michael Artin", MacTutor History of Mathematics archive, University of St Andrews .